GM You've chosen to set the play in a world which is closer to now than to the time in which it was written, or the time it was written about, if we can identify what that is. Is there a particular reason you chose that setting?
SM It's set loosely in the mid to late 1930s, in an imagined war between the Turks and the Venetians. There are certain Shakespeare plays which demand you create an imaginative universe for the play, quite separate from any real period - The Tempest for example. What happens on those plays is that you expand into them, you can explore the play theatrically. But Othello is the first Shakespeare play I've directed which makes specific, social demands without which the play won't work.
It seems to me that there has to be a recognisable social and military hierarchy for a modern audience. Othello is a General, and the pressure that the play exerts on the characters is very dependent on this hierarchy. So I wanted to find a period that was relatively modern and that would release the play into a 20th-century environment without hampering it, and without answering too many questions, if that doesn't sound too pretentious. We therefore came up with an unspecific 20th-century set of uniforms: the dark blue, vaguely Fascist ones, and the khaki, slightly English-looking colonial uniform. I was able then, I thought, to bring in echoes of 20th-century British colonies. It is, after all, written by an Englishman and there are certain characters who I would say are specifically recognisable as English types, one of them being Cassio. Probably Iago as well. The English army, on the basis of what Shakespeare has written, doesn't seem to have changed that much in the last 450 years. So, in there are echoes of Somerset Maugham, Paul Scott, EM Forster, Casablanca, film noir, Lawrence of Arabia, even The English Patient.
I also wanted to be able to feel the desolation and the loneliness of Cyprus. Shakespeare's play is set on an island within an island, as it were: the barracks is itself closed off to the outside world, outside of which exists a foreign race, and then there's the sea. You're a long way from home and Venice. I wanted to get that sense of compression and claustrophobia. And also I wanted something that was, not to put too fine a point on it, sexy, that acknowledged the youth of Othello and Desdemona in my vision of the play, and there's something about the texture of that period which is enticing.
Audience question
When you're doing something like Othello, do you go back to the source of the play... Cinthio? [Shakespeare's main source was probably The Story of Disdemona of Venice and the Moorish Captain by Giraldi Cinthio, 1566]
SM I did read it. It's completely and utterly different from Othello. Shakespeare used it as a source, but changed a lot of the motivations. Actually one of the most fascinating things about the story is the fact that, in it, Iago and Emilia have children, and Iago is a very good father. I think that's really interesting because one searches for contradictions in Iago's personality, which I think Simon [Russell Beale] has found, but the fact that Shakespeare left that fact out tells you that he decided he didn't want them to have children, and that tells you something about how Shakespeare views the relationship. So in looking at the sources, you learn about the play by seeing what he's left out rather than what he's put in.
Audience question
What decisions did you take about staging the death of Desdemona, which is done very realistically and unromantically?
SM I hate bad stage deaths. When someone dies, it takes a long time, particularly when they're suffocated. I think you have to feel the weight of the death, viscerally feel what it's like to kill someone. Also I wanted Desdemona to be someone who fought hard to stay alive. You can tell by the scene that precedes it, she does not want to die. Interestingly enough, the first rehearsal of that scene was incredibly frightening. We worked for three weeks without blocking, stayed in a circle, did the play several times playing the scenes in different ways and doing exercises. And I said to Claire [Skinner] 'I want you to fight him as much as you can'. They had a good notion of the lines because they'd each done the play before, which helped a great deal. And that first time we did Desdemona's death was very, very disturbing. I don't think anyone in the room knew if Claire was acting or not. It turned out she wasn't.
She was panicking because she was claustrophobic, but didn't want to stop because she wanted to know what it felt like. I felt terribly guilty about it - you don't want to put an actor's life in danger, but I knew she was intelligent enough to stop if she wanted to. That is now on stage, and that one rehearsal cracked that scene. She now recalls the panic she experienced that first time. It is an incredibly sordid death and, yes, does de-romanticise it.
SM He's heterosexual. I think he has a fascination with Othello which is not homosexual, but the fascination of a different race, a different physical type, a different mind, a different sexual drive. I don't think he's in love with Othello, but I think that weirdly, as he destroys him, as he becomes closer to him both physically and emotionally and begins to understand how he ticks, it sort of turns him on. It's a power trip, and that can be very sexual. I think that's where it shades over occasionally into accusations of homo-eroticism. But I don't think it's a homosexual love affair, I think Iago has loved his wife, and that one of the crucial motivating factors for him is that he understands jealousy absolutely because he himself has experienced it with his own wife. So to ignite it in someone else is a very easy process. He knows exactly which buttons to press. The crucial button - which he delays and delays, and then eventually says 'Look to your wife' - is so uncannily brilliant it's not possible for Iago not to have experienced it himself. Maybe someone had said to Iago exactly that line about Emilia, and it had been true, maybe just one time, that Emilia had slept with someone else. That in itself is enough to destroy a man, as the play proves.
Audience question
I find it extremely difficult to feel sympathy for Othello's decision to kill Desdemona. How did you find an explanation for that?
SM You can't say 'We're going to explain the text'. It's like the moment Cressida betrays Troilus. She does it. Not all human actions are motivated by lengthy thought, in fact the biggest decisions in one's life are taken perhaps in the final ten seconds before action. You have to build up to that point. Othello kills Desdemona, and then regrets what he's done to such a degree that he kills himself. There could hardly be a greater admission of defeat. So I don't think the play is about how stupid Othello is. What I did go for very strongly is that he has to be emotionally very vulnerable. To that extent, David [Harewood's] youth helps him. I think you understand how a man like that hasn't had the experience of a wife or a permanent lover to fall back on and he begins to question himself. I wanted to make his fear of her loss the greatest motivating factor. I think the crucial speech is the one he delivers at the end of our first act - 'She's gone. I am abused, and my relief Must be to loathe her'. I think there's a great vulnerability, humanity and warmth, despite the fact that he's saying he must loathe her.
He can't see another option; in the first flush of extreme emotion it's very difficult to see your way clear. The skill of the play is that Iago pounces on that and in a very short space of time the whole thing snowballs. By midnight she is dead. It's a very specific timescale. If anything enters that plan of Iago's in that space of time, he's lost the game. But in that time Iago plays a blinder. He doesn't make any mistakes until right at the very end and by that time it's too late. So I think it's about one man's malice and genius, and another man's weakness, but I don't think you should find Othello too much at fault.
Audience question
Could you comment on how Desdemona is played?
SM I depend a great deal, as any director does, on the imagination of actors. You cast somebody who is the right age and type, yes, but also who has the right imagination, the right level of spiritual understanding. Claire is a wonderful and strong presence. Desdemona made a very specific decision to marry this man. It seems to me extraordinary for someone, even now, to creep out of the house at ten o'clock at night and go down the road and marry a large black general without her father knowing. So that's the main thing I had in my mind about the character. You want someone with the courage of her convictions and the presence of mind to make that decision.
GM - You might also ask if what her father and Iago say about her isn't in some sense true. That she has deceived her father and may - indeed possibly does - deceive Othello. There is a conventional way of looking at it, that she is an innocent victim of his insane jealousy and there's another way that says perhaps she's not quite straight...
SM Well she does deceive Othello because she knows the handkerchief is lost and doesn't say so. That's a big mistake. It's a small lie but in terms of the story it's big. And of course, Iago confronts Othello with the single most important piece of information, psychologically, about Desdemona, which is that she tricked her father. If she can do that to her father, a very rich grandee, she can do it to Othello, and Othello can't deny that. Two incontestible pieces of information. He knows she knows the handkerchief is missing, and he knows she betrayed her father. That makes her in some way extremely strong, an active participant in the drama, rather than an insipid feeble girl.
Audience question
I was trying to work out the time span of the play. How long a period does the story cover?
SM There's something rather odd about the timespan. Shakespeare telescopes time. It says they arrive in Venice in three days, and in reality the journey took three weeks, we discovered in doing our research. And there are all sorts of eccentric pieces of timing in the first act. But the point seems to me that when he needs the clock to be ticking specifically, Shakespeare sets it going. Desdemona says to Othello, 'Come in for dinner', so we know it's night time. Then everyone says 'Gosh isn't it dark' and the town's empty, so we know it's late. He spells it out. From Act III onwards the play is very concerned with specifics and domestic detail.
Audience question
Do you think Iago's motives are as clear cut as you state, or do you think he shows a deeper instinctive evil in his character?
SM 'Deeper instinctive evil' - I think that's a generalisation, I don't understand what that is. I think you've got to root it in specific emotions and events. The problem is that Iago specifies so many different reasons for doing what he does. I think he does it for all those reasons, but that doesn't amount to the real reason. I don't think we'll ever really know. The evil, if you like, is compounded of specifics. Character flaws, vulnerability, loss, desperation, ambition, lack of promotion Ð the flaws in him, which he's probably intelligent enough to realise. It's three dimensional and complex beyond my understanding. I can't truly comprehend a man who can do those things, and I think that's why the play is so truly fascinating because it makes evil specific and precise and human.
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